In recent years, there are increasingly accelerated high integration and miniaturization of semiconductors widely used in electronic equipment, communication instruments, personal computers or the like. This demands various better characteristics of laminates for semiconductor plastic packages.
Conventionally, as the laminates used in the semiconductor plastic packages, a prepreg and a metal foil-clad laminate obtained by impregnating or coating a base material with a resin composition containing an epoxy resin and a curing agent are widely known. Further, various curing agents such as amines, acid anhydrides, and phenols are known.
Phenolic resins are used as the curing agent of the resin composition for the laminate for semiconductor plastic package. Among them, phenol-based resins having a small number of hydroxyl groups with respect to a molecular weight are known as the phenolic resins having low water-absorption properties. For example, a biphenylaralkyl-based phenolic resin, a naphthol aralkyl-based phenolic resin, and a novolac-based phenolic resin obtained by reacting a naphthalene formaldehyde resin with phenols or the like are known as the phenol-based resins having low water-absorption properties (for example, see Patent Literatures 1 to 5).